Lover Beware 03 - After Midnight

Jane rigid.
    Letting out a breath and feeling faintly ridiculous for overreacting, she stepped outside, bracing herself against the hammer blow of heat and blinking at the hot glare as she skimmed the drive and the semicircle of farm buildings. She hadn't expected to see a vehicle, and there wasn't one.
    Berating herself as, if not paranoid, then definitely neurotic, she did a circuit of the buildings, studying the ground, as if she could somehow discern the shape of a footprint in dirt that was packed as hard as iron, or spy a broken stem in the bleached, matlike covering of Kikuyu grass that sprang back, tough and resilient, beneath her sneaker-clad feet.
    As she checked the stockyards and the slatted dimness of the shearing shed, it occurred to her that if there had been anyone at all on her property, there was a simple explanation as to who it could have been—her nearest neighbour.
    Her heart stuttered in her chest, and her stomach did a nervy little somersault at the prospect of coming face-to-face with Michael Rider, an instant freeze-frame forming in her mind: dark eyes, taut cheekbones, tanned olive skin, black hair that flowed to broad shoulders.
    Michael Rider existed in the category that any sane woman would label as dark and dangerous. The fact that he was her neighbour didn't make him any more reassuring. In any city he would stand out; in the small town of Tayler's Creek, he was as exotic and barbaric as a jungle cat in suburbia.

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    FIONA BRAND
    She'd been avoiding him for the past three days, ever since she'd seen the lights on at his house and realized that he was back after yet another six-month absence. Although, if Rider had called, she was certain he would have made his presence known. She couldn't imagine him doing anything as under-handed as sneaking, despite the fact that he was a special forces soldier and probably trained to sneak.
    When she was satisfied no one was hiding, crouched ready to spring, in any of the outbuildings, she shook her head in amused exasperation and strolled through the line of shrubs that screened the barn from the house, riffling slim, tanned fingers through her dark bangs and lifting the thick plait that lay against the back of her neck, allowing air to cool the over-heated skin at her nape.
    Checking her watch, she noted it was an hour short of lunchtime, but already the sky was hazy, the heat intense; the heavy, somnolent silence broken only by the sawing of crick-ets, as if every living creature, aside from the legions of glossy black insects, had gone into temporary hibernation. Even the breeze had died, so that the sun blazed down unchecked, suck-ing up moisture and leaching all the rich colour from the land-scape; the distant, wavering heat shimmer lending the hills a sere, arid cast, when just weeks ago they'd been green and lush with early summer growth and an overabundance of rain.
    Jess barked again, and Jane postponed the idea of a glass of lemonade, frosted with condensation and tinkling with ice cubes, and walked around the side of the house. She saw Jess in the far paddock—where she'd been, no doubt, hunting rabbits—standing stock-still, staring into the dark rim of the bush that flowed over a good deal of Jane's land.
    The cold unease she'd felt in the barn returned, amplified.
    Just because there hadn't been a vehicle, didn't mean that someone hadn't walked through her place—unlikely as that event might be.
    She called Jess, and the small black and tan huntaway trotted toward her, hackles up. Jane dropped her hand to the dog's head, soothing the rough fur.
    She hooked her fingers through Jess's collar. "What is it, girl? What did you see?"
    Jess whined and turned her head. A long' pink tongue streaked out and licked Jane's wrist. Jane released her hold on After Midnight
    175
    the little dog and stood beneath the white blue arc of the sky, a hand shielding her gaze as she watched Jess disappear into the edge of the bush.
    Minutes later Jess scooted free of the trees and trotted toward Jane with a stick in her mouth.
    The saliva-coated offering plopped on the ground beside Jane's foot, and the tension holding her rigid dissipated. For the first time since Patrick had died, her home hadn't felt safe— she hadn't felt safe—and the feeling had rocked her.
    Maybe there had been no cause for alarm and she had overreacted, but she still felt unnerved and a little shaky.
    But then nothing had felt normal or right since Patrick had died. She was